


A Long Way Gone and Back

by Requiem



Category: The Hour (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Adam Le Ray/Angus McCain, Character Study, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21832186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Requiem/pseuds/Requiem
Summary: A chance encounter changes little in the grand scheme of things, but for one person, it makes all the difference.
Relationships: Adam Le Ray & Freddie Lyon
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Long Way Gone and Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adevyish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adevyish/gifts).



Everyone's laughing.

Not at him—at least, he thinks they're not; reality had started to escape him somewhere around drink six or seven and doesn't look like it's coming back anytime soon—but the sound of their merriment weighs him down like a bag of bricks tied to his ankles as he slowly sinks into the dark of the ocean's depths. He could drown and no one would be any wiser.

"Lemme out," he murmurs in Ralph's ear, leaning in a little too close for polite company, but he can blame it on the drink like he always does. "Bathroom."

Ralph puts distance between them with practised ease and a laugh that's the perfect blend of amusement and annoyance, and gets the others to shuffle around the booth so Adam can slide out.

He stumbles through the haze of smoke past the groups of men who are drinking, talking, and laughing like everything's alright—and why wouldn't it be? He's the one who doesn't belong here, the outcast, the interloper, the pretender—and finally makes it into the bathroom.

He empties his stomach into the nearest toilet bowl, but it does little to quell the roiling in his guts that he knows stems from more than just drinking too much. He splashes some water on his face, smooths down his unruly hair, plasters a look that's less haunted despondency and more drunken amiability onto his face, and staggers back out.

He can pinpoint his destination by the raucous laughter that rises up from the table, and all at once he loses the will to rejoin them.

"I'm going home," he mumbles to Ralph as he passes by.

Ralph turns it into a production by making a show of checking his watch. "Adam, it's not even nine! Are you feeling alright?"

The table laughs, and Ralph along with them.

Ralph has been Adam's closest friend since childhood, but somewhere along the way, their relationship has morphed from easy camaraderie into a delicate balance of overacting and filling silence with meaningless words. Ralph pulls most of the weight in their friendship these days with Adam's faltering career and now his failed engagement dragging him down, and he's just counting the days until Ralph turns his back for good.

"Just sick of seeing your ugly faces is all." Adam gives the group a smile that feels like it's going to split his face in two, and they laugh uproariously back at him. "I do fancy a night in with the telly from time to time. I'll catch you lads another night." He over the back of the booth for the half-empty tumbler he'd left marking his seat, and throws back the remainder of his whiskey before slamming the glass down and sauntering away with a jaunty wave.

He barely makes it out the front door before he’s sinking to the ground under the garish neon sign outside the bar and closing his eyes. His limbs are so heavy it feels as though he’ll never get back up again.

Presently, footsteps come to a stop in front of him. The police, most likely, about to ask him to move along so the sight of him slumped across the pavement doesn't offend the sensibilities of the upper echelons of society that frequent these streets.

"Mr Le Ray?"

The voice is just on the cusp of familiar but Adam can't quite match it to a name, so he cranes his neck upwards and squints against the light.

"Mr Lyon! What an unexpected surprise!" Somewhere in the depths of Adam's fuzzy recollections exists a memory of him telling Lyon—and Hector, Hector had been there too, but he understood, knew the sacrifices one made for the sake of keeping up appearances—something he shouldn't have, but the good thing about being so far gone is that he can't bring himself to care.

"You're drunk." The statement is made matter-of-factly; the detached observation of a journalist who never stops working.

Adam opens and closes his mouth several times and eventually comes up with, "Yes," for lack of anything more witty to say.

"I'll call you a cab." The blurred image of Lyon recedes.

"Don't bother." Adam pushes himself to his feet with great difficulty and staggers a few steps down the street, one hand on the wall to keep himself upright. "I'm going to walk. Lovely night out." He's got a good feeling the rocking motion of a car will make him throw up, and the last thing he wants is to feel even worse than he does now. He fumbles for the flask at his hip and takes a swig.

Or he'd meant to, but he needs two hands to unscrew the lid, and that means taking his hand off the wall. His legs buckle under him and the ground rushes up to meet him, but before they collide, a hand closes tight around his upper arm and yanks him back onto his feet.

"Where are you going?" Lyon asks with exasperation as he pulls Adam's arm around his shoulders. "I'll walk you, if it's not too far. It'll probably be too much for the public if you drop dead so soon after Ruth." The last part is muttered under his breath, though not so quietly that he hadn't meant for Adam to hear it.

"Mr Lyon—"

"Frederick will do. Or Freddie, if you're feeling familiar."

"Freddie." The word rolls from his tongue to the back of his mouth in a delightfully strange way. "Freddie," Adam repeats. His tongue is too heavy to enunciate clearly. "Freddie."

"Yes, what?" Freddie snaps. "I'm listening."

Adam considers saying his name again to feel the way it sits in his mouth, but it's lost its novelty already. "44 Denham Street," Adam says instead. It's only a block away and he's usually capable of stumbling home on his own after a night of heavy drinking, but it's nice to have the company.

It takes all of Adam's concentration to put one foot in front of the other and not fall flat on his face as the blur of street lights and storefronts passes him by. It's a feat accomplished through the exemplary teamwork of himself and Freddie, who's been steadfastly taking more and more of Adam's weight without complaint. Well, he is muttering to himself, but Adam can't make out what he's saying.

When they get to the door of Adam's flat, he stands there stupidly looking at the handle like it'll open itself before Freddie says, "Keys? Tell me you have them."

"Yeah, I—" As Adam starts patting himself down, feeling for the irregular metal shape of his keys, his arm slides off Freddie's shoulder, and the rest of his body follows. At least the floor is carpeted.

"Hopeless." Freddie takes over the search, eventually fishing out a bunch of keys from one of Adam's inside jacket pockets and trying them one by one until the door opens. "Come on, in you go."

Freddie tugs on Adam's arm, but the rest of his limbs refuse to respond, as though feeling how close they are to not having to move again for the rest of the night.

"I can't," Adam says helplessly. If Freddie can just get him inside the door, at least the neighbours won't have too much to talk about.

Freddie loops his arms under Adam's, drags him inside, and somehow manages to get him back on his feet and into the bedroom where he gets unceremoniously dumped onto the bed. Much better than sleeping on the floor.

Freddie turns around, then turns back, and rolls Adam onto his side. He also takes Adam's tie off and undoes the top two buttons of his shirt, which brings them so close together that it takes little effort on Adam's part to reach up, grab Freddie by the front of his shirt, and press their lips together.

It's clumsy and far too desperate and Freddie's about as reciprocal as a post, but his lips are soft and smoke-tinged, and it's the best idea Adam's had all night.

"Stop that." Freddie pushes him away, but it's less with disgust and more with annoyance. "You're drunk. Go to sleep." He goes to turn off the light.

"Stay," Adam says, not quite begging yet. "I'm sorry. I won't do it again. Just—please. Stay."

"I can call someone for you."

"I'll owe you one. Anything you want. Please don't go." Now _this_ is begging, but Adam can't stand the thought of being left alone to wallow in his misery right now. "Please."

"I—you—" Freddie puts his hands on his hips, remaining carefully out of arm's reach. "Fine, but I have to make a call first."

"Out in the hall." Adam gestures towards the foyer where a telephone sits at the end of the long table inside the entrance.

He listens intently, braces himself for the sound of the front door opening, but Freddie only picks up the receiver and dials, talking too quietly for Adam to hear what he's saying.

The call is over in less than a minute, then Freddie's putting the receiver down and coming back into Adam's room.

"So, how are we doing this? Shall I sit by your bedside and hold your hand or will it suffice for me to remain in the living room?"

"Can you—" Adam gestures weakly at the armchair across the room. There's nothing he'd love more than to have another warm body next to his in the bed, but he's keenly aware of how far he's already pushing his luck.

Freddie sighs exasperatedly, but turns off the room lights before dropping into the armchair and switching on the small lamp next to it. "Go to sleep," he says, taking a small notebook out of his jacket pocket.

Adam watches Freddie through half-lidded eyes, but he seems to already have forgotten that Adam's there, frowning at the notebook as though he's trying to solve a particularly difficult puzzle.

"Did you know her well?" Adam asks. "Ruth Elms." Drunk as he'd been that night, he still remembers the anguish and the fury that had set Freddie's eyes alight, the crushing grip of surprisingly strong hands for Freddie's slight frame that had clutched at Adam's arms and shaken him out of his spiral of self-pity.

"You're supposed to be sleeping," Freddie mutters, not looking up from his notebook.

"What are you hoping to get out of investigating a debutante's suicide?" Adam muses, mostly to himself. "I can't imagine it'd make for a particularly interesting story, and the news hasn't been exactly slow these days."

"It wasn't suicide!" Freddie snaps, finally looking up. "Ruth knew something, and she was killed for it. I'm going to find out who and why, and you're going to help, but you're no use to me like this. Stop talking and go to sleep." Freddie angles himself even more away from Adam, hunching over his notebook in a clear indication that the conversation is over.

"'Kay," Adam says after a long silence stretches between them that he can't think of a way to fill. "'Night, then."

-

Freddie's gone when Adam wakes up, but there's half a pot of coffee in the kitchen and a note on the counter.

 _Gone to work_ , the note says. _Don't think I've forgotten about that favour you owe me._

The coffee's still warm.

Adam's got rehearsal later today, but that's not until three. He feels a little lost as he pours himself a cup of coffee and sits down at the dining table; his usual routine involves getting blackout drunk until the early hours of the morning, rolling into bed at some point before dawn, then sleeping until midday and waking up with a dram of whiskey to chase away the hangover. On the rare occasions that Angus comes home with him it's not much different, only they make it to bed much earlier, and sometimes Adam wakes in time to watch Angus slip out the door into the early hours of the morning.

It's not even eight o'clock yet, and Adam can't remember the last time he was so lucid at so early an hour. It's almost enough to have him out of his chair in search of a drink, but as he takes another sip of coffee and looks down at the note Freddie had left him, his thoughts wander instead to the kiss that in the daylight feels like just another mistake in a string of many.

He hadn't meant anything by it beyond it being the last desperate act of a drowning man, but it reminds him that he hasn't been as careful as he should be of late. The point of the engagement had been to make things better, not worse, and once things had begun to snowball, it had just been easier to keep falling. But if there's still a part left for him to play, he can stand to put his feet on solid ground for a little while.

-

It's two days before Freddie shows up at Adam's doorstep early in the evening, inviting himself in once Adam opens the door.

"Angus McCain. How well do you know him?" Freddie wastes no time in asking.

Adam chokes on a mirthless laugh. "What do you want? A meeting? Stay a while longer and you can have it right here." He and Angus don't have a schedule—far too easy to be found out—but Angus had called just an hour prior to tell Adam that he had no further business to attend to today, which is as good as an admission that he'll be coming over later tonight.

Freddie looks over his shoulder like he expects Angus to be standing behind him. "Right, well, I need some information from him."

"I can get it." Adam isn’t so deluded as to think that Angus is anything resembling in love with him, and he’s not so short-sighted that he doesn’t have insurance tucked away for if Angus tries to use their...arrangement against him.

"No, it’ll be better if Hector does it. Just give me something he can use."

Adam digs out the photographs from between his collection of old scripts and gives them all to Freddie, who flips through them with a raised eyebrow.

"You do realise you'll also be incriminating yourself?" he asks.

Adam shrugs; it's not like he has much left to lose, and he'd much prefer to go down in a blaze of infamy than to quietly waste away, forgotten.

Freddie thumbs through the photographs again and draws one out, holding it up for Adam to see. "Can I borrow this one?"

Adam's barely recognisable in the dim lighting, sprawled across a sofa in some club with his head thrown back while Angus sucks a bruise onto his collarbone and runs a hand under his rumpled shirt. Angus must have been blind drunk for the photographer—some working boy Adam probably slipped a few pounds to—to have been able to get in so close.

Adam shrugs again, and Freddie tucks the picture into his jacket.

-

Angus arrives two hours after Freddie leaves, just as furtive but nowhere near as talkative, and he's picking his clothes off the floor and lacing up his shoes before the clock strikes midnight.

"What's the rush, Cinderella?" Adam drawls, ensconced in the blankets he'd drawn closer to himself in an effort to contain the escaping heat from Angus' departure.

Angus is looking in the mirror as he buttons his waistcoat and straightens his glasses. "I think it would be best if we don't see each other anymore."

Adam had known this was coming, but he hadn't expected it happen so soon. What, had Hector been waiting downstairs for Freddie to hand over the blackmail material? Well, Adam supposes there's no sense in delaying the inevitable.

"Fine, if you say so," he says, over-affecting nonchalance.

Angus finally turns around, clearly expecting to encounter more resistance.

"You know best, after all." Adam injects as much sarcasm as he can into his words, and fixes Angus with an icy stare.

"Don't be a child." Angus puts on his jacket and checks himself in the mirror again. "Goodbye, Adam."

Adam lets himself fall back onto the bed as he listens to Angus take his leave, shutting the front door behind him without another word.

Adam lies motionless for a few minutes amongst the rapidly-cooling blankets, the silence ringing loudly in his ears. It's not like he and Angus saw much of each other outside of their late-night trysts and whenever Angus saw fit to come to one of Adam's performances—always under the guise of inviting dignitaries and politicians for a night out, never alone—but there's a certain comfort in being able to look across the room and see him there, and, Adam has to admit, a certain thrill in knowing exactly what the prime minister's press liaison gets up to behind closed doors.

No matter, all that's over now. There will be other warm bodies to invite to bed, and until then, he's found whiskey makes for a halfway-decent substitute. Adam goes to the kitchen and pours himself a drink.

-

He's somewhere between drunk and hungover when Freddie knocks on the door of his flat the next day, rapid woodpecker taps that urge Adam towards the front door even with his head pounding fiercely and having no idea who's come calling. When he answers the door, Freddie's standing outside digging through the pockets of his coat.

"Did you get what you wanted?" Adam asks as he tries to figure out why Freddie's come back. It would be a shame if all of this had come to naught.

"Yes, here, I've come to return this." Freddie thrusts the photograph he'd taken at Adam. "You—no, there's no time to explain. Watch the show tomorrow night!" He's gone in a whirlwind of energy and excitement before Adam can even think to invite him in for a cup of tea.

Adam spends much of the day sleeping off the hangover, and when he wakes late in the afternoon, Freddie's visit feels like a fever dream he isn't sure really happened or not. But then he looks over at his nightstand, and on top is the photograph he'd let Freddie take. He distantly wonders if Hector had actually shown it to Angus, or if just the merest hint that his secret was not so much of one anymore had been enough to send him running scared.

-

Adam tunes into The Hour the next evening more out of curiosity to see what's come of the small part he had to play than a real desire to watch the show. The only thing he bothers to stay current on is reviews of his latest performances, but he's not as oblivious to everything else as he pretends to be, and has been able to glean from those around him—Angus in particular—that something is brewing in political circles.

Even in his ignorance, Adam can tell that the evening's programme is sure to have Angus out of his seat and picking up the telephone with the way it so boldly toes the line between treason and news. The footage of the protests at Trafalgar Square gets Adam to sit up a little straighter, stirs a spark of regret at never having fought for anything he believed in, but it's not until they bring out Lord Elms that he really gives the screen his full attention.

Lord Elms looks older than Adam remembers, no less distinguished for it, but also tired and defeated, like he's been bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders and now has no choice but to let it fall.

Adam remembers how relieved the Elmses been when he'd dutifully played the part of besotted fiancé without asking any questions, remembers thinking of them as just another pair of aristocrats eager to make an inconvenience go away, but now, he can't help but wonder if that initial assessment had been incorrect.

Lord Elms, in his quiet, understated way, tells the story of a man who's suffered a great loss at the hands of a government he had once unequivocally defended. It's career suicide, no matter how much truth is behind his words, but Adam knows well the face of a man with nothing left to lose.

Freddie, on the other hand, looks like he knows exactly what he has to lose and is willing to risk it all anyway, staring directly into the camera with an intensity that seems to bleed through the screen. "If we cannot reasonably and intelligently query about the rightness of an action that at appears at heart to be deceitful, then we are not a free—"

The lights go out and the sound cuts off, to be replaced by the buzz of static and the words _Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible_.

Adam's heart pounds in his chest.

Angus must be at the studio, he thinks, baying for blood. Oh, to be a fly on that wall…it must be a marvellous sight, worthy of capturing in a script and re-enacting on the stage to an audience half titillated by the scandal and the other half outraged. The people will be talking about this for weeks, which is more than can be said for most of Adam's performances. Retribution will surely be sought, but an idea has been seeded in the minds of the people, and that's something that can't easily be taken back.

-

Freddie knocks on the door late enough that night that the neighbours would talk if any of them were still awake, and he and Adam sit out on the balcony with cigarettes and whiskey.

"Did you know Ruth had been recruited by a Soviet spy?" Freddie breaks the silence first, delivering earth-shattering words in an unassuming tone. "They killed her for it. MI6."

God, what _had_ Adam known about Ruth? Oh, they'd played their parts well, smiling for the papers and posing with their arms around each other, gazing adoringly into each other's eyes. The reviewers who crucified him in the papers would eat their words if they only knew how good of a performance he put on every day. But in the end, he and Ruth had been not much better acquainted than if they'd met in passing on the street.

"How long have you known?" Adam asks.

"Little less than a day. For certain, that is. Got the confirmation from McCain himself." Freddie looks at Adam out of the corner of his eye. "Couldn't have done it without you, you know."

Adam doesn't believe that for a second. "Yes, you could have."

"Alright, yes, but nowhere near as quickly. If McCain hadn't led us to the proof we needed, it would have been all too easy to dismiss Lord Elms' interview as the ramblings of a bereaved old man."

"Glad I could help."

Silence elapses between them again, each lost to their own thoughts.

"They killed her because of me, you know," Freddie says, the slightest hitch to his voice. "She spoke to me and they decided that the deal she'd struck wasn't good enough anymore, that she had to be permanently silenced."

"It wasn't your fault," Adam says automatically, thinking back to that night at the Sherwin estate. Most of it is still a blur, but the memory of Freddie yelling at him stands out against Hector's quiet disgust and Angus' scathing coldness. Freddie had been right; he should have cared. Then maybe Ruth would have confided in him instead, and he would have gone to Angus, who would have stopped it from propagating further, and the whole thing would have been neatly contained without the need for senseless killing.

Freddie's shaking his head. "I could have saved her. She called me the day she died, but it was _hours_ before I went to see her, and when I got there…if I'd only been a few minutes faster, a few seconds, even…funny, how that's all it takes to change the course of someone's life."

"And you think MI6 would have let her go? They don't give up so easy." Adam's seen enough 'tragic accidents' befall dissenting members of high society—sudden heart failure, drunkenly falling from heights or onto the railway tracks—to know that when the government has its sights set on someone, they're as good as already dead.

"Maybe not. But I can still see her hanging from that showerhead, hear her begging me for help, and this is the best I can do: interview her father on national television."

"I think…" Adam treads carefully, searching for words that won't make things worse. "I think she would have been proud of what you did today."

"I hope so."

There's still so much left unsaid between them, some that are maybe better left unsaid, but Adam gives Freddie a moment to himself before asking, "So where do we go from here?"

"Well, I've just been fired, so I find myself with a sudden abundance of free time." Freddie puts out his cigarette on the balcony railing. "I've always wanted to travel, and I expect there are a not few people who'd love to see the back of me for a while. How about you?"

Adam shrugs. He can't remember the last time he'd been the one at the reins directing where his life is going next. There's always been someone—Angus, his parents, the pressures of society—telling him what to do and how to act. Now that he's rid himself of two and no longer cares about the third, he feels more lost than free.

"Don't…" Freddie turns to look at Adam, and doesn't continue until Adam looks back. "Don't give up, Adam. You wouldn't want them to win."

Ah, the nameless, faceless 'they' who can reveal themselves to be enemies and detractors, or friends, family, and lovers. Those who would seek to stand in the way of truth and progress and freedom in the name of maintaining the status quo. Adam's never thought of himself as a fighter, but then, he's never had anyone to show him how.

"No, we can't have that."

They exchange small smiles, all they can muster on this bittersweet occasion, then Freddie holds out his hand.

"Mr Le Ray. It's been a pleasure."

"Likewise, Mr Lyon."

They shake hands like they're closing a deal, then Freddie goes back inside to pick up the jacket he'd thrown over the back of a dining room chair and shrugs it on, all graceless long limbs quivering with an undercurrent of anticipation. He doesn't look back as he leaves, but rather than something coming to an end, this feels like a new beginning.


End file.
